Most women seem to have one major concern in relation to nutrition: not overeating. But you’re not most women. As an athlete, your nutrition concerns range from preventing dehydration and bonking in races to minimizing post-workout muscle soreness.
There’s no shortage of sports nutrition information available to help athletes address such issues—which is a problem in itself. Every day, it seems, you hear about a new study proving the performance benefits of some bizarre eating strategy or nutrient you’ve never heard of. To complicate matters further, sports nutrition companies make so many competing claims you don’t know whom to believe. At some point, it all becomes noise.
But fueling your body for maximum athletic performance is not as complicated as it may seem. Everything you need to know to get the results you want can be boiled down to ten basics.
Rule 1. Keep it natural.
Robust health is the foundation for fitness and athletic performance. Eating for health should therefore be the primary objective of your diet as an athlete. The same principles of healthy eating that apply to the average woman apply to highly active women. The majority of foods you eat should be as natural and minimally processed as possible. As a general rule, the shorter the list of ingredients in a food product, the better. Refined sugar, fried foods, and processed oils should have the smallest place in your diet.
Balance is also important. No single food has all the nutrients you need for optimal health, so it’s important to eat a variety of different food types every day. Use these guidelines to ensure your diet has adequate balance.
Fruits and vegetables:
Recommended Servings per Day: 7 to 9; strive for more veggies, about one serving more than fruit.
What’s a Serving: 1/2 cup veggies, 1 cup leafy veggies, 1 apple, banana, orange, etc., 1/2 cup berries
Grains:
Recommended Servings per Day: 6 to 8; make most, if not all, of them whole grains.
What’s a Serving: 1 slice bread, 1/2 cup cooked rice or pasta, 1 cup breakfast cereal
Legumes (lentils, soybeans, chickpeas, kidney beans, etc.), nuts, seeds:
Recommended Servings per Day: 4 to 5; limit nuts to 1 to 2 servings.
What’s a Serving: 1/2 cup cooked legumes, 1/3 cup nuts
Dairy:
Recommended Servings per Day: 3; opt for those low in saturated fats.
What’s a Serving: 1 cup milk or yogurt, 1 1/2 ounces cheese
Lean meats, poultry, eggs:
Recommended Servings per Day: 1 to 2
What’s a Serving: 3 ounces cooked
Fish:
Recommended Servings per Day: 3 to 6 per week
What’s a Serving: 3 ounces cooked
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, mypyramid.gov
Rule 2. Let form follow function.
Maintaining your ideal body weight is important for all-around health, whether you’re an athlete or a couch potato. For athletes, staying lean is also important for performance. Your best body weight at optimal health is also your best body weight for sports and exercise performance.
That’s good news because it gives you a simple way to determine how much you should eat each day. Instead of counting calories, which can be tedious and inaccurate, monitor your performance in workouts. If you follow a sensible, progressive training program, your fitness will gradually improve from week to week, unless you’re eating too many calories per day or not enough. Stagnating performance coupled with rapid weight loss is a likely indication of underfueling, while stagnating performance coinciding with steady or increasing weight may mean you’re getting too many calories. In either case, a slight adjustment to your daily eating amounts should put you quickly back on track.
Rule 3. Balance your energy sources.
Athletes often make the mistake of overemphasizing one macronutrient—carbohydrates, fats or proteins—at the expense of the other two. All are equally important.
Carbs should account for at least 50 percent of the total calories in your diet. If you eat less you may experience low energy in workouts due to insufficient stores of glycogen—a carbohydrate-derived fuel—in your muscles. Fats should account for at least 20 percent of your daily calories (more healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, like nuts and olive oil, than saturated). One study found that runners who consumed too little fat were more susceptible to injuries. Finally, at least 15 percent of your daily calories should come from protein. Inadequate protein intake will compromise your recovery from workouts and limit the amount of training you can handle without getting sick or injured.
So, what makes up the remaining 15 percent? The distribution of these calories—whether more carbs, fats or proteins—should depend on what works best for you and can vary from day to day without negative consequences.
Rule 4. Gorge on free-radical fighters.
Free radicals are unstable molecules that attack and damage cells. Due to the high rate of oxygen consumption associated with exercise, athletes experience more free-radical stress than sedentary people. The muscle-repair process that occurs after workouts releases even more free radicals.
Fortunately, exercise also strengthens the antioxidant system the body uses to prevent and limit free-radical damage. But your antioxidant defenses won’t work to their full potential unless you maintain a diet that’s rich in antioxidants—which means one that includes lots of fruits and vegetables. In addition to aiming for seven to nine servings daily, try to eat a wide variety of different fruits and vegetables. Each has its own unique antioxidant profile that benefits the body somewhat differently than others.
Rule 5. Eat frequently.
Athletes in all sports benefit from developing a lean body composition, where muscle is preserved or added and excess fat stores are whittled away. Frequent eating (four to six meals and snacks per day) is a dietary pattern that’s proven to assist athletes in getting leaner, independent of total calories consumed or macronutrient breakdown.
When you divide your daily calories into more meals, you’re less likely to consume more calories than you need to supply your body’s immediate energy needs. As a result, fewer excess calories are stored as body fat. Many women are concerned that by eating more often they will eat more calories each day, but research has shown that those who eat fewer meals tend to consume more total calories each day. Here’s a sample six-times-a-day eating schedule:
